hms iron duke

Monday, 31 October 2016

Alphen, Netherlands. 31
October. I have just returned from this year’s outstanding Riga Conference in
the beautiful and historic Latvian capital. My sincere congratulations to Toms
Baumanis and his team of young professionals and volunteers at the Latvian
Transatlantic Organisation for putting on such a great event.

Some years ago I
established the Riga Test. It is a simple test; can the good citizens of Riga
sleep soundly safe in the knowledge that their liberties and freedoms are
protected and defended? When I established the test some ten years ago it was a
very different world. My purpose was to say to NATO and the Allies that this is
the real test of Alliance defence and deterrence. To be frank, I did not expect
at the time the Riga test to become active. Now, I am not so sure.

Russia’s illegal
annexation of Crimea, the shooting down of Malaysian Airliner MH17, the cyber
and ‘hybrid’ harassment of Baltic allies, the interference in Western
elections, and the soon-to-be unleashed massive Russian assault on Aleppo,
quite possibly on Wednesday, the deployment of treaty-busting nuclear weapons
into central Europe, all suggest a Moscow that believes Machtpolitik and Weltpolitik
are one and the same thing.

However, in saying that I
must also confront a dilemma. To what extent does my Riga Test actually contribute
to the unease, even the fear that those charge with Russian propaganda clearly
want to instil in the people not just of Latvia, but wider Europe? One of my best friends, a senior Latvian
diplomat, reminded me over the weekend that the Riga Test also imposes responsibilities
on me. He is right and there is a point for me to answer.

In fact this is a responsibility
which I take very seriously indeed. You may have noticed that for a bit of fun
I style myself a ‘strategic hooligan’. This is to demonstrate my fearless determination
to confront power with hard realities, and believe me I did not hold back in
Riga. However, the only real strategic
hooligan around at present is Russia. My overriding feeling about this is one
of sadness as I have great respect for Russia and Russians. Still, Russia’s
strategic hooliganism is an observable fact.

There are three things
that really worry me about the Riga Test today. The first two are European
elite complacency and Russian economic weakness. The third issue I will come to in a moment.
Too much of Europe’s leadership simply do not lead when it comes to the defence
of Europe. They are utterly complacent about all the challenges Europe now
faces, and not just from Putin’s Russia. It is that complacency which creates
the space for Putin to cause strategic mischief.

My second worry is not
Russian strength, but Russian weakness. For all Russia’s appalling behaviour of
late it is no Soviet Union and we are not about to enter a new Cold War. For
all the military sabre-rattling Russia’s economy is about half the size of
Britain’s economy. Unfortunately, like the Soviet Union before it, Russia’s
military-industrial complex is consuming an ever-greater amount of the Russian
economy.

In the 1980s Europe ‘got
away with it’ because Gorbachev came to power in Moscow and tried to reform an
unreformable Soviet state. One of Gorbachev’s aim was to open the Soviet
economy up which eventually rendered Moscow amenable to a new relationship with
the West. President Putin seems intent on driving the Russian economy in the
opposite direction, which will not end well.

Which brings me to my
third worry; Brexit and NATO. Britain is committing a significant force to the defence
of the Baltic States and rightly so. And yet at the conference there was a
distinctly anti-British tinge. Indeed, I became increasingly irritated by the
disrespectful tone of many comments about my country. People may not like the
democratic decision the British people have taken to leave the EU, and on balance
I agree it was a mistake, but that is democracy. Get over it!

There is an even more
serious point at stake here. If people expect and want one of the world’s top
five powers to go on defending them, to put the lives of their young people on
the line in pursuit of their defence, then at least show some respect! There
seems to be a disconnect in the mind of many Europeans between Brexit and NATO.
The two are entirely connected. If EU member-states who are also NATO members
believe they can drive a hard bargain over a soft Brexit AND expect the British
to continue to defend them; think again. There could well come a point when the
British people get so fed up at the attitude of certain allies that they will
begin to ask why Britain should bother. To use the language of my native
Yorkshire, the British people might invite them to bugger off and defend themselves!

What is really needed is a new relationship between Britain and the EU as quickly as possible. This will end the uncertainty, the growing irritation, and prevent Brexit becoming an almighty strategic distraction. Britain, after all, is not the enemy!

Ultimately, it is my job
to call it as I see it. After all, informed citizens speaking their minds should
be how Western democracy functions, however inconvenient oft-too-distant, elites
find such challenge. My purpose is to not to make such elites weaker, but
better. Therefore, I will of course continue to consider carefully what I write
and how I write it, as I do all the time. However, I will not, nor will I ever,
demur from my citizen’s right to speak hard truths to lacklustre power.
Especially when it concerns the freedoms and liberties of my friends in Latvia
and the other Baltic States.

Thursday, 27 October 2016

“…the vicissitudes of
fortune, which spare neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries
empires and cities in a common grave”.

Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Rome, Italy. 27 October. It is
eerie. The extent to which contemporary
Europe appears to look much like the Roman Empire on the eve of its demise.
Rome’s fall began with the loss of Britannia in 383 AD, Rome’s decline took far
longer. Over many years the Empire became de-stabilised by Visigoth hordes
driven from the east by horse-mounted Hunnic warriors pushing into Europe from
Central Asia. For a time Rome tried to integrate the Goths, or at least work
with them. Alaric, the great Goth king famously forged an alliance, and indeed
a friendship, with Roman General Flavius Stilicho. However, when Stilicho was
murdered in 408 AD by those close to the Emperor Honorius it was the last straw
and Alaric broke completely with Rome. Alaric’s willingness to work with a
perfidious Rome had been declining for some years. He tired of being promised a
homeland within the Empire that never came to pass, and he grew bitter that his
forces were used as front-line cannon-fodder in Rome’s seemingly interminable
border wars. Finally, in 408 AD Alaric marched on Rome, and in 410 AD he sacked
the Eternal City.

Rome never recovered. Between 410
AD and 455 AD the weakened Empire faced repeated attacks by the fearsome Huns, culminating
in the massive Battle of the Cataulanian Plains in 451 AD, in what is today modern
day France. It was an unlikely alliance of Roman General Flavius Aetius and
Goth King Theodoric I that defeated Attila the Hun. However, for the Empire it
was a Pyrrhic victory. Rome lost six of its best legions in the battle which effectively
sealed the Empire’s fate.

However, it was not military
might alone that defeated Rome. In October 439 AD the Vandal King Gaiseric, one
of the most under-estimated strategists in history, captured Carthage in what
is today Tunisia. Back then Carthage was the bread-basket of Rome, supplying
the vast bulk of the city’s food. For years Rome had been suffering economic
shocks. Without Carthage Rome simply starved.

Why did Rome decline? There were many
reasons. Edward Gibbon put it down to the adoption of Christianity as the ‘state’
religion and the loss of Roman virtues. However, perhaps the most compelling
reason was that by the fifth century Rome was politically decadent, led by a
deeply divided and utterly self-obsessed elite totally focussed on the inner
politics of Rome. It was arrogance that brought Rome down reinforced by a firmly
held and misplaced belief that it was superior and thus destined to rule.

In fact, Rome’s decline had been
evident for at least a century. In 286 AD Emperor Diocletian had split Rome
into an Eastern and a Western Empire because it had become effectively ungovernable.
The East and the West then went their own ways even fighting civil wars with
each other. Rome’s day was done.

Now, scroll forward some sixteen hundred years to modern day Europe. Look at a map of Europe and even today the
borders of many European states still reflect the tribal borders carved out
with blood in the fifth century AD. The similarities do not end there. ‘Europe’
has been the dominant world grouping for some 500 years. Even the US was, and
is, created in Europe’s image. The ‘Empire’ today is, of course, the EU. Like
Rome before it the EU is about to lose ‘Britannia’. And, like Diocletian Brussels
is simply unable to govern effectively the whole of a Europe that remains very
different from one end to the other. Today, the ‘barbarian hordes’ (the word barbarian derives from the Latin word
meaning to ‘babble’, i.e. not speak Latin) come not from the east but from the
south. And, like Roman citizens before them, many Europeans see such illegal mass
migration as akin to an invading horde.

Then there is the latter day
Geiseric, President Putin, who seeks to control much of Europe’s power and
energy supplies (look who sponsors the Champions League – Gazprom). For Putin, like
Gaiseric before him, control of a vital commodity is simply a means to a strategic
leverage end. Like Gaiseric, Putin seeks
at the very least an inflated ‘tribute’ from ‘Europe’, or like Attila the
freedom to ‘sack’ bits of it when and as he so pleases. Attila would have fully
understood the Putinian concept of ‘changing facts on the ground’ because that
is what he did.

The EU? Like Rome Europe’s latter
day ‘senators’ seem obsessed with the inner-workings and politics of Brussels,
are utterly divided over the future of the EU, ever more subject to repeated
economic shocks, and unable or unwilling to see the dangers lurking beyond
Europe’s borders. Chancellor Merkel as Caesar Augustus? I don’t think so.

In fact history does not repeat
itself, because by definition it cannot. Europe today is very different from is
fifth century predecessor, and in any case we Europeans are not organised into
tribes, are we? Moreover, to condemn all migrants as being part of one almighty
invading horde would not only be inaccurate, it would also be utterly unfair. But
then again the Huns, Vandals, and Visigoths were themselves very different, and
in the early days at least sought very different relationships with Rome. Critically, if Europe is to cope with massive immigration
surely the first duty of those in power is to separate good people from bad
people, irrespective of race, creed, religion etc.

What do repeat themselves are patterns
of power, and it is the ‘pattern’ of Rome’s fall that is perhaps most germane
to contemporary Europe. President Putin’s Weltmacht
and the growing challenge of illiberal power to the Western liberal order, and
the other-worldly fanaticism of IS and its ‘fighters’ both reveal one great
weakness that is shared by modern Europe and pre-medieval Rome. They both
refused to face up to reality. In Rome’s case by the time Aetius eventually
convinced the imperial family to face the precarious reality Rome was facing it
was far too late. In any case, like Stilicho before him, Aetius was murdered by
the Emperor for becoming too powerful. Rome
lost its last great general.

It is not yet too late for modern
Europe to face reality. However ‘tempus’ does indeed ‘fugit’.

Tuesday, 25 October 2016

“We
are in the middle of a world revolution, and I don’t mean Communism. The
revolution I am talking about is that of the poor, little people all over the
world. They’re beginning to learn what there is in life, and to learn what they
are missing”.

General
George C. Marshall

Alphen, Netherlands. 25
October. With the Battle of Mosul in full swing the next stage of the war
between the Middle Eastern state and anti-state IS forces is about to begin.
This stage could well see more attacks launched around the periphery of the
Middle East, most notably in Europe. On Saturday I listened to US General John
Allen speaking on BBC Radio about what he warned could be a potentially
‘interminable conflict’. General Allen has kindly written the foreword to a new
book William Hopkinson and I have written entitled “The New Geopolitics of Terror: Demons and Dragons” (Routledge) which
will be published in January 2017.

The book is sub-titled Demons and Dragons because it refers to
the range of multifarious and nefarious actors (demons) involved in the war and
which make the struggle for Mosul just one, albeit deadly element, in what is a
generational struggle over faith, ideas, territory and power. It is a struggle
that will not only shape the future Middle East and much of North Africa, but also
much of the geopolitics beyond.

And then there are the
dragons. This is not simply a war between Iraq, Syria, IS, and a host of other
rebel groups. As the involvement of Iran, Turkey and other regional power
attests; the current struggle could simply be the prelude to a general Middle
Eastern war between states. And, beyond the dragons there are the
super-dragons, global powers for which the Middle East is again a theatre for
geopolitical competition, and not just between Russia and the West.

What to do? Perhaps
America’s biggest-thinking and most considered military man what General Allen
told the BBC might surprise some and should be a lesson for all Western
leaders. There will be no military
solution to the conflicts in the Middle East and terrorism will never be
defeated. What matters instead is a sustained coherent, cohesive grand
strategy, and billions of dollars of investment to partner forces for good in
the region (and there are many) that could offer the region’s millions of
people some hope for their future. In other words, what is needed is thus a new
Marshall Plan for the Middle East it could well be the defining foreign policy mission
of the coming US Administration.

The European Recovery
Program or Marshall Plan (named after its architect General George C. Marshall)
was launched in April 1948. Eventually Washington pumped some $12 billion
dollars (about $50 billion in today’s money) into a European economy shattered
by World War Two. Critically, the Plan was not simply an act of American
altruism. Rather, it was a crucial ‘weapon’ in the early Cold War with the
Soviet Union because it was an investment in European freedom and future
prosperity. That is precisely why Stalin and Molotov rejected the Plan.

Now, one can argue about the
efficacy and wisdom of Western-inspired plans to impose democracy on Middle
Eastern societies. However, if one looks at global mega-trends that are also
driving conflict in the Middle East the need for socio-economic reform looks ever
more critical. This means at the very least improved education, prospect of
jobs, reduced corruption and the just rule of law.

Here is where the
challenge really begins. Of late the approach of the US and the wider-West to
the grand challenge posed by the Middle East has been little more than a hand-wringing
counsel of despair. If Western leaders really want to end conflict,
humanitarian suffering and the seemingly endless flows of society-bending migration
flows into Europe then a radical policy shift is needed in which they invest political,
as well as real capital, over the short, medium and long-run. This is after all
a generational challenge.

Paradoxically, for such a
plan to work it would also need NOT to be a Western plan, with a name that was
of the Arab people not of the West. There would also be a vital need to link
local community-based activism to grand strategy via grand policy in much the
same way as the European Recovery Program. The role of charities and other
legitimate agencies that make life bearable in the region would be pivotal,
many of which are Muslim. Work would also be needed to support regional states
and institutions such as the Arab League to see the money regional powers
invest are matched and that political reforms bolster rather that weaken partner
states. Iran and Russia? Like the Marshall Plan Moscow and Tehran would be
invited to participate to demonstrate the Plan favoured neither Shia nor Sunni,
neither East nor West. If, like Stalin and Molotov, Moscow and Tehran refuse to
co-operate then they would be frozen out.

The consequences of failure?
Yet another Western failure in the Middle East would be disastrous, most
notably for Europeans, but above all the people of the region itself. Indeed, the Plan would be as much about securing the
citizens of Berlin, Paris, London et al as those in the Middle East. And it is
this bigness of vision that would perhaps be the greatest challenge to a
generation of post-Cold War European political leaders long on rhetoric, very
short on action and delivery, and even shorter on political vision and courage.

For such a plan to work
it would need to be very big and very long. For, as General Allen said on the
BBC, such a Plan would in turn require politicians to “embrace enormity of
newness of thinking, planning and structure and think very differently”. Is the
West up to it? If not the twenty-first century will be a very cold and a very
dangerous place. What alternative do we have?

Thursday, 20 October 2016

“Any
ruler that has ground troops has one hand, but one that also has a navy has
both”.

Peter
the Great

Alphen, Netherlands. 20 October.
What is the state of the Russian Navy? Many years ago at Oxford I wrote a paper
entitled, “The Development of the Soviet Navy as a Blue Water Fleet with the
1956 Appointment of Admiral Sergei Gorshkov”. Snappy title, eh? As I write a ‘blue
water’ power-projection Russian fleet is sailing towards the English Channel
having been escorted in turn by a Type-23 Royal Navy frigate HMS Richmond, and two Type-45 destroyers
HMS Duncan and HMS Daring. At the core of the eight-ship Russian task group is
Moscow’s one aircraft-carrier the 1980s built, 43,000 ton (standard load) Kuznetsov. Ironically, the Kuznetsov has just steamed a few nautical
miles from where Britain is fitting out and completing the new 72,500 ton
aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth
and HMS Prince of Wales.

The Russian task group
certainly looks impressive. It left Severomorsk Harbour on Saturday to sail
round the North Cape into the Norwegian Sea. The Kuznetsov is supported by the nuclear-powered missile cruiser Petr Veliky, and the anti-submarine
cruiser Severomorsk, together with
five other units. Two further Russian ships are at this moment off the French
coast heading north seemingly to rendezvous with the task group.

Some distance off
Severomorsk the carrier’s air wing arrived and included Mig-29/KUB, Su-27 and
Su-35 fighters and fighter-bombers, together with Ka-52K helicopters. From the exercising that began in the
Norwegian Sea and continued south past the Orkneys it appears the group is
preparing to undertake air strikes against Syria (most likely Aleppo) from the
sea when the group arrives in the eastern Mediterranean.

This year the Russian
Navy celebrated its 320th birthday. Whilst much younger than the
Royal Navy, the Russian Navy remains one of the world’s most celebrated. From its
founding by Peter the Great for much of its history the Russian Navy, if not a
blue water fleet – a force capable of operating globally – could still project
Russian might far and wide. After the disastrous loss of the 1905 Battle of
Tsushima to the British-aided Japanese, and the subsequent 1917 overthrow of
the Tsar, the Soviet Navy for a time became little more than a coastal
protection force. That limited role ended with Gorshkov. In the 1960s and 1970s
the Soviet Union constructed a powerful global reach force of cruisers,
destroyers and nuclear attack and ballistic missile submarines, culminating in
the enormous Typhoon-class nuclear ballistic missile submarines.

The Soviet strategy was
pretty much the same as today. The strategy had four elements: to create
protected bastions or spaces from which Soviet ‘boomers’ could launch ballistic
missiles in relative safety; to protect the approaches to the Soviet Union; to provide
an outer-layer for a multi-layered defence; and to harry and stretch Western
navies through the aggressive deployment of fast nuclear hunter-killer
submarines, particularly Western ‘boomers’ and surface forces.

For much of the 1990s the
Russian Navy fell into a terrible state of disrepair, eventually resulting in
the tragic loss of the new nuclear attack submarine Kursk in 2000. The loss was due to a highly-dangerous experiment
into the use of a form of torpedo propellant that the Royal Navy had also tried
and abandoned in the 1950s. With the 2000 arrival in
power of President Putin the Russian Navy has been steadily reclaiming its
strength. Now armed with the new Iskandr
family of missiles the Russian Navy is fast developing again the capability to
exert power, influence and effect far beyond Russia’s borders.

Admiral Viktor Chirkov
said recently, “The Russian Navy is being equipped with the newest weapons,
including long-range strike weapons, and has big nuclear power. Naval forces today
are capable of operating for a long time and with high combat readiness in
operationally important areas of the global ocean”. It is true that the Russian
Navy can deploy an impressive array. However, and even though President Putin
has prioritised naval construction to an extent, Russia’s difficult fiscal
situation means that the Navy has far fewer platforms than in the past, and
they are required to do far more tasks by Russia’s aggressive foreign policy. Equally,
the ships the Russian Navy does possess have seen a step-change over the last
decade in a whole suite of capabilities from weapons, to sensors, to enhanced command,
intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.

It is in the design and
construction of submarines where the Russian are making particularly impressive
progress. Since 2010 the sixty strong Russian submarine fleet has been
augmented by the commissioning of 8 new Borei-class
nuclear-powered, ballistic/long-range nuclear cruise missile submarines, 10 Graney-class nuclear hunter-killer submarines
and 20 super-quiet diesel-electric submarines of the Varshavyanka class. By way of comparison the Royal Navy’s seven
Astute-class nuclear-attack submarines have been under construction since 2001
and only three have yet been commissioned.

That said, for all the
impressive appearance of the Kuznetsov
group the Russian Navy of today is a work-in-progress and still enjoys nothing
like the strategic reach or operational flexibility of the United States Navy.
It is also open to question whether the Russian Navy will continue to receive
the necessary investments needed to meet its impressive post-2010 build programme.
Moreover, Russia lacks key shipbuilding capabilities which has limited the expansion
of the Navy. The loss of the two French-built Mistral-class assault ships has also reduced the
maritime-amphibious capacity of the Russian Navy significantly.

However, Moscow remains
utterly committed to developing a twenty-first century navy that can properly
fulfil its three core missions of deter, defend and demonstrate Russian power.
The West must therefore grip the strategic challenge implicit in today’s
Russian Navy because it is first and foremost a weapon being honed for possible use
against the West.

Tuesday, 18 October 2016

“The
idea that the future will be different from the present is so repelling for our
conventional way of thinking and for our behaviour that, at least the vast
majority of us, if not all, pose a great resistance to acting on it in
practice”.

John
Maynard Keynes, 1937

Alphen, Netherlands. 18
October. The other day in Poland I watched one of those ‘power films’ beloved
of armed forces showing full throttle military ships, aircraft, and
camouflaged, armour-clad soldiers in action, backed by typically stirring
modern, martial music. In fact, it was ‘faux power’ because for all the
impressive military platforms and systems on show, and vital though they are,
making the citizen really secure in the twenty-first century will demand much,
much more. ‘Security’ now demands far
more than big, metal bits that go bang.

One of the many
highlights last week in Toronto at Julie Lindhout’s ATA General Assembly
meeting was the chance to chair a panel of real experts on the challenge posed
by new technology to defence strategy. Too often those of us who float high in
the intellectual ether of policy and strategy fail to properly grasp the very
real danger that future shock could well emerge from the shadows of our own
ignorance. Jon Lindsay of Toronto University, Brigadier-General Henrik Sommer
of Allied Command Transformation, and Duncan Stewart of Canada’s National Research
Council helped put me straight.

Duncan Stewart warned of
the dangers posed by ‘disruptive technologies’ that threaten to negate billions
of dollars of defence investment and the linear thinking that drives much of it.
Brigadier-General Sommer considered the role of force in the face of such
threats. The modern military force will need to be ‘agile’, one part of a
system of systems that can defend as much against cyber and hybrid attacks, as
against enemy aircraft, ships and tanks.

.

However, it was Jon
Lindsay was raised what for me was the existential question of the session. Are
Western states any longer intellectually, technically, militarily, and
politically agile enough to defend themselves? When I think of my own country
Britain I really wonder. Look at any major project in which the British
Government is currently engaged and two words spring immediately to mind; utter
incompetence. Let me add a third word; utter bloody incompetence! Most of this
incompetence is due to the lack of leadership, vision, and joined-upness at the
very top of government for which London is sadly now ‘renowned’. It also
reflects a lack of understanding as to what is needed.

The need for such
joined-upness is self-evident. The application of such technologies to the contested
security space is not limited to realm of cyber. Nanotechnologies,
micro-biology and a whole host of hitherto ‘exotic technologies’ are entering, or
about to enter, the geopolitical fray. Such technologies could act as the Great
Leveller enabling ever smaller actors to generate ever greater strategic effect
as the price of mass destruction and disruption falls.

Sadly, for all the
strategic talk (most of it blah, blah), and for all the investment being made
in intelligence, policing and armed forces in an effort to strengthen the home
base and thus protect the ability of the state to project power, much of it is
nonsense. The level of holistic thinking needed to craft strategy and policy in
such a complex environment demands at the very least a proper understanding of
what is out there, what could be out there, and what we in the West need to do
to ensure and assure our own security. From my experience such understanding simply
does not exist. Worse, there is insufficient understanding at the policy level
of those capabilities and capacities which already exist and which could render
Western societies more affordably secure.

Far from crafting the grand
strategy (the organisation of immense means in pursuit of even greater security
and defence ends) necessary to prevail Western society suffers instead from
grand vulnerability. The bottom-line is this; the central nervous systems of
Western states ever more dependent on cyber and information as the flowing
corpuscles of governance, are ever more vulnerable to catastrophic penetration.
They must be hardened and protected if those same states are to retain the
power to protect people AND project power.

Therefore, to use
American parlance, the defence and the offence must become far more joined-up,
as must security, defence and society. Above all, those charged with the
responsibility for security and defence must have a far better understanding of
the relationship between emerging technologies and future shock.

There was once a time
when I would have said a country like Britain would have been able to withstand
such shock. My sense now is that like so many Western societies British society
is ripe for the taking. Yes, intelligence services prevent a lot of attacks,
both state-sponsored and otherwise. However, to paraphrase Winston Churchill
modern Western ‘one-hit’ societies are fast becoming egg-shells that whilst able
to hurl huge rocks fall apart if hit even once. Indeed, the very emphasis on
prevention masks the woeful investment in societal recovery vitally needed if
resiliency is to mean anything when, inevitably, a really major attack
succeeds.

Thus, the challenge to
the West from disruptive technologies becomes greater by the day as society
retreats from hard reality into soft denial. A successful cyber, bio or other
such attack would test the last vestiges of solidarity between and within
ill-prepared states. Social cohesion is at best fragile, and societal
resilience highly questionable. And,
until governments stop treating citizens like children they will be complicit
in the very insecurity they seek to prevent.

No Western government,
with the partial exception of the US Government, has any real clue about the
threat posed by disruptive, penetrative, destructive non-military technologies
to open societies. In fact, lagging governments are far more concerned with hiding
how little they know, than properly crafting a sound defence, building robust
resilience, and preparing for effective response and recovery. As Duncan Stewart said, “cyber is scarier
than you think”. In fact, it is all scarier than we think.

Armed forces are pioneering joint force commands. What is really needed is a Joint Security Command charged with considering security and defence in the round.

Friday, 14 October 2016

“There are no limits to the mighty future of the majestic expanse
of Canada with its virile, aspiring, cultured, and generous-hearted people”.

Winston S. Churchill

Toronto,
Canada. Canada is a great country with which I have a great affinity. However, its
Ottawa Establishment suffers from the same affliction from which most Western
elites suffer; talking grand talk whist walking little walks. This affliction is
most un-Canadian as unlike its noisy neighbour to the south Canadians pride
themselves on having their feet firmly on the ground. At the excellent 62nd
General Assembly of the Atlantic Treaty Association organised by Hugh Segal and
Julie Lindhout and their team at the NATO Association of Canada the grand talk,
little walk affliction was sadly all too apparent. Whilst there was much talk
of defending freedom and values, there was little willingness to pay for that
defence. Sadly, strategic denial is all the rage here in Canada.

The most
obvious denial concerns Russia. The Ottawa Government like many of their Western
Europe counterparts suffer from a full-on dose of the “Putin could not really
do that, could he?” syndrome. The assumption of the Canadian Government is that
the self-declared enemy of the West would not dare risk a force-on-force
confrontation with NATO by attacking/subverting the Baltic States. This is ‘hope-for-the
best’ strategy-fying at its worst, and ignores or simply reflects an ignorance
of the scenarios the Kremlin are considering for a lightning land grab in the
Baltics. Right now Russia has both the capability and the opportunity to undertake
such a strike and there is little the Alliance could do about it if Russia
simply stopped at the Polish-Lithuanian border.

To be fair to
Canada Ottawa is sending some 450 troops to Latvia to establish an ‘enhanced
forward presence’ in order to bolster NATO deterrence. Many NATO nations have
declined to offer such assurance to its Baltic partners – France and Italy to
the fore (or is that rear?). However, Canada at best can send only half a battlegroup because it armed forces are either insufficiently equipped or insufficient
of deployable number to send more, better-armed troops.

Part of the
reason for this is the current Canadian Government under Prime Minister Trudeau
is locked in a strategic time-warp. Ever since Lester Pearson joined two other “wise
men” sixty years ago to produce a report into the non-military aspects of NATO
Canada has prided itself on its pioneering role in military support for soft
power. It is a badge of honour for Canadians that they are one of the world’s
great peacekeepers, and rightly so.

However, that
was then and this is now. To hear Canadian after Canadian line-up to tell me
how they are going to better perfect a peacekeeping art that belongs to another
age smacked of a ‘stop the world we want to get off’ view of matters strategic.
There is clearly little or no willingness on the part of official Canada to
recognise that Canada is a three-ocean power all three of which are now contested
in a new great power geopolitical age.

Canadian
defence spending (or lack of it) revealed strategic hokum at its smelliest. Indeed, I was
deeply impressed by the ingenious but utterly disingenuous ways senior
Canadians seem to convince themselves Canada is spending enough money on
defence when Canada plainly is not. One senior Canadian said that Canada spends
better than other Alliance member-states – nonsense. Another Canadian told me
that other states fiddle the books to get to the agreed 2024 NATO Defence
Investment Pledge of 2% GDP on defence of which 20% of that is to be spent on
new kit – sort of nonsense. There is a NATO mechanism for calculating defence
expenditure which Canada simply chooses to ignore.

None of this
bodes well for the Trudeau defence review. Indeed, it looks likely to be yet
another of those politics dressed up as strategy reviews which implies an
increase in defence expenditure when in fact defence cost inflation will see yet
another real terms cut in Canadian defence expenditure. The most likely victim
will be much-needed major procurement programmes. Result? If the balloon really
goes up over the next decade the people who will bear the brunt of Ottawa’s
defence out-of-touchness will be the superb but under-equipped ordinary airmen,
seamen and soldiers of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Maybe these figures
(based on SIPRI 2015 estimates) will wipe the smile off Prime Minister Trudeau’s
face. Cut through the flannel and the
fact is that Canada spends $478 per capita on defence. This compares with the
US which spends $1859 per capita on defence, the UK $1066, France $977, and the
Netherlands $759.

The worst failing is that Ottawa thinks that defence expenditure is discretionary.
Worse, that Canada can engage in geopolitics as Ottawa so chooses. This is nonsense.
If there is one country that is totemic for globalisation it is Canada. One
only has to see modern Canada to understand that. To think that Canada can opt-out
of the really dark side of globalisation was perhaps the greatest conceit of
all here. And yet that is precisely what rich Canada seems determined to do.

Thursday, 6 October 2016

(This article has just appeared the October-December 2016 edition of The NAVY: The Magazine of the Navy League of Australia". It is reproduced with kind permission of the Editorial Board. The article has been adapted to fit the technical constraints of the blog).

"Britain now had world empire because she was the preeminent sea power; the lesson for Tirpitz was that if Germany wished to pursue Weltmacht, only possession of a powerful navy…could make it possible".

Castles of Steel, Robert K. Massie

The NAVY set this author an interesting challenge; to consider the maritime positioning of Australia,

Japan and the United States with regard to China. The challenge is interesting in two ways. First, my

first thought was that ‘maritime positioning’ was some form of dynamic navigation device. Second, my very British keel is firmly anchored in Dutch waters. And then I got to think. One of my theses is that the West is no longer a place but a set of liberal values, interests and strategic assumptions centred on the United States and shared by partners the world-over. And, that the very idea of the liberal West is being challenged by illiberal power the world over with much of that challenge emerging on, under, and above the sea. It is in that geopolitical context one must necessarily consider the ‘maritime positioning’ of Australia, Japan, and the United States with regard to China.

MARITIME POSITIONING

First, let me deal with what I mean by maritime positioning. It is the role of the respective navies of the three countries in relation to their own defence, all-important and evolving US grand strategy, and China’s own burgeoning geopolitical ambitions. This brief article will thus consider all three issues in turn before concluding by considering them all within the context of the global West.

The core message of the piece is direct; China’s naval challenge is not untypical of emerging illiberal powers. Beijing places much store on a powerful People’s Liberation Navy not just because such a force is a legitimate weapon for the world’s number two economy to possess. Powerful navies have always played well to the strategic egos of emerging powers – liberal and illiberal. China is little different from Imperial Germany at the turn of the last century in this regard. Like it or not, unless there is an unlikely new treaty that would limit naval armaments the likes of China and Russia will determinedly draw the liberal West into a naval arms race that in its scale and strategic implications will look a lot like that between Britain and Germany in the run-up to the First World War. The regimes in Beijing and Moscow simply cannot help themselves. So, where do Australia, Japan and the United States fit into this changing strategic maritime picture?

AUSTRALIA

The Royal Australian Navy is a small, modern western force. Traditionally, whilst designed first and foremost to safeguard Australia’s national interests in and around Australian waters, the RAN has always played a wider geopolitical role as a strategic adjunct to other navies. For many years the RAN was in effect a farflung flotilla of Britain’s Royal Navy. As Britain declined in the wake of World War Two the role of lead force was steadily usurped by the United States Navy. Today, with a force of fifty commissioned ships focused mainly on frigates and conventional submarines, augmented by some amphibious and mine countermeasure capabilities, the RAN is again playing an important strategic role reinforcing the United States Navy (USN), particularly when it comes to the latter’s role in protecting the global commons vital to the well-being and security of the global West. Contrary to what some in Australia seem to think the RAN is not a strategic force in and of itself and future planning would not suggest any real ambitions on the part of Canberra for the RAN to play such a role any time soon.

JAPAN

The Japanese Navy is not dissimilar in role and function to the RAN, even if it is markedly larger. Since the defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1945 and the adoption of the post-war Japanese constitution the role of Japan’s forces as self-defence forces has severely circumscribed any autonomous strategic role for Tokyo. This restraint has been applied rigorously to the Japanese Navy precisely because the Imperial Japanese Navy was at the very heart of Japanese power projection during World War Two. Like the RAN the Japanese Navy has for many years contented itself with guarding Japanese home waters and supporting the USN in maintaining a balance of power in East Asian waters and the wider Asia-Pacific theatre. So long as that balance was maintained the Japanese were content to play a purely defensive role as part of US naval and wider grand strategy. However, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s planned revision of the Japanese constitution would permit Japanese forces to play a more assertive role in defence of a wider understanding of Japan’s interests. This revision of Japan’s strategic stance ultimately reflects Abe’s own belief that the postwar balance of power in Asia-Pacific could at some point collapse. Abe has good reasons to be concerned.

THE UNITED STATES

One reason for concern in both Canberra and Tokyo is the growing global overstretch of US forces, in particular the USN. As the world’s only global power the United States looks increasingly like Great Britain in the 1890s when the naval challenge from Imperial Germany began to take shape. The Americans remain strong on paper but their forces are stretched thin the world over. Consequently, the illiberal powers now control the timing, the location, and indeed the manner by which they can choose to complicate American strategic calculation. It is a situation made worse by the political gridlock on Capitol Hill which for some years has been driving sequestration which in turn has badly damaged the US ability to undertake the long-term planning vital to strategic navies such

as the USN.

Worse, the threat to global power projection navies from smaller, regional actors is growing. The advent of super-silent submarine technology, navalised ship-killing drone and missile, and other technologies is making it ever easier to disrupt power projection and increase the cost and risk of effective sea control and sea presence. Such technologies are placing at risk the big, expensive platforms upon which a global reach navy like the USN rely upon to fulfil the global power policing role which has been thrust upon the Americans, not least because of the strategic and political

weakness of many key allies, most notably in Europe.

CHINA

The big change-agent in maritime affairs is China which today is playing a role very similar to Germany in European waters prior to World War One and Japan in Pacific waters prior to World War Two. China has been growing its defence budget at double digit percentage figures since 1989. The People’s Liberation Army Navy is developing a form of joint extended-reach strategic defence force with blue water capabilities that is fast tipping the balance of power in the South and East China Seas.

This change has profound implications for Australia, Japan and the United States when the now highly-likely confrontation eventually happens.

Chinese strategy is clearly designed to establish exclusive control over much of the South China Sea, to force Japan into subordination in the East China Sea, and by demonstrating that China not the United States will determine the strategic shape of much of Asia-Pacific force Australia and other regional powers to treat with Beijing on Chinese terms. If successful China would successfully reduce both the influence of US forces in the region and the value of strategic partnerships with the US for regional powers. The stakes raised by the Chinese challenge are thus very high indeed, with particular implications for Western navies.

ALL AT SEA?

So, what to do about it? Let me take contemporary Britain as an example. There has been a lot of nonsense written about the state/fate of the Royal Navy. Some of the misplaced Schadenfreude about the Royal Navy borders on self-mutilation. However, the Royal Navy is actually showing the way forward for all non-American western navies. Yes, there are short-term investment, technological, equipment, and personnel challenges faced by the Royal Navy. This is hardly surprising for a country that provided the second largest force in support of US campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq over thirteen long, attritional land-centric years. A country which had to endure a banking meltdown at the same time. Britain is roughly where the world’s fifth largest economy and top five military spender would expect to be after the last decade. Australia needs Britain to be strong – period!

The good news is that sea blindness in Britain is at an end.

RN’S RETURN TO STAGE

By 2023 the Royal Navy will again be one of the strongest power projection navies in the world. The commissioning of the two large 65,000 ton power projection carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales is proceeding. The Type-45s suffer from technical problems that are in the process of being fixed, and the new Astute-class nuclear hunter-killer submarines are powerful reinforcements of the British fleet, and for political reasons if nothing else the Type 26 frigates will eventually be built.

What matters is the place of the Royal Navy in the British future force concept which is by and large correct given the nature of the coming global challenge. The mistake of the critics is to make false comparisons with the Corbettian Royal Navy of Empire or the not-at-all customary Mahanian moments of the 1914-1918 Grand Fleet or Sir Bruce Fraser’s 1945 British Pacific Fleet when the Royal Navy deployed seven fleet carriers to support a hard-pressed, Kamikaze vulnerable Nimitz.

No, the twenty-first century fleet the Royal Navy is constructing will sit at the command hub of future coalitions of Europeans and other navies. It will leverage the naval power of others with the strategic aim of helping to keep the USN strong where the USN will need to be strong at moments

of crisis. As such the future strategic Royal Navy will again buy Britain influence in Washington and elsewhere that no other ally will match. The RAN and Japanese Navy will need to play a similar role in Asia-Pacific if they are to remain relevant to the power game that is afoot. And, if Australia can overcome its sniffy attitude towards the Royal Navy and focus on the positives rather than routinely seek the negatives then there are a lot of lessons for both partner navies to learn from each other.

THE GLOBAL WEST. NAVIES AND STRATEGIC
LESSONS FOR AUSTRALIA

Security and defence are today globalised and Australia is part of the global West. If the likes of China and Russia continue to attempt to throw their illiberal weight around as they seem destined to do then India and other powers will no doubt seek the comforting embrace of

the Global West.

However, the Global West will not happen by itself. It needs partners like Australia, Japan, the US, Britain and others to see the role of navies therein for what they are; power projection forces of an American-centric global liberal community committed to maintaining a just balance of power. And, if needs be have the capacity and capability to project power via a necessarily blue water concept that affords influence, effect, and deterrence for ALL of its members.

Then, only then, will the new strategic arms race China and Russia are driving be seen to be folly and both Beijing and Moscow realise that such policy is simply the road to strategic and financial folly. That aim would in turn help re-institutionalise global security from which the two illiberal

powers are currently breaking out.

The navies of the Global West will have a vital role to play in such strategy precisely because alongside the USN they can project power, exert influence through sea presence and project power discreetly and decisively through sea control. In other words, the strategic role of Global

Western navies will necessarily need to merge both Corbett and Mahan

and organise to that effect.

Therefore, Australia needs to realise the vital role of the RAN in such a strategy and seek the strategic partnerships – new and old – equally vital to realising such a role. If for no other reason than for the sake of Australia’s own security in a world where nowhere is a strategic backwater and in which no-one can free-ride. In other words, this author’s Yorkshire worldview of navies must be little different from the Australian world-view.

Professor Dr Julian Lindley-French is Vice-President of the Atlantic Treaty Association, Senior Fellow of the Institute of Statecraft, Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow at the National Defense University, Washington DC, and Fellow, Canadian Global Affairs Institute.

Tuesday, 4 October 2016

Oslo, Norway. 4 October. “This
parrot is dead. It is an ex-parrot”, says parrot-purchasing Monty Python’s John
Cleese in the famous parrot sketch. “No, no, he’s not dead. He’s resting.
Remarkable bird the Norwegian Blue”, replies parrot-vendor Michael Palin. Watching
what passes for Britain’s Brexit debate reminds me of the parrot sketch, not
least because I am in Oslo. Actually, I am in Oslo to help launch a new book
entitled “Ukraine and Beyond” which considers what to do about an aggressive
Russia (which is of course brilliant and very reasonably-priced). However,
parrots, Brexit and Norwegians seem to go together these days.

Reason is the dead Brexit parrot,
with truth lying mangled in the corner.
It is an ex-reason that is no more and has gone to meet its maker. On
one side of the debate the Brexiteers suggest that exiting the EU will be
straightforward when in fact it is plainly in the interest of so many powerful
vested interests to make it as hard as possible. To suggest that post-Brexit Britain
will have full access to the Single Market AND impose restrictions on free
movement is pure Norwegian Blue (or is that bull). If agreed to by the EU the
entire post-Lisbon edifice of an already shaky EU would crumble. On the other
side, Remaniacs remain wedded to the falsehood that the poor little dears who
voted for Brexit had not a clue what they were voting for and should be ordered
to do it again, but this time get it right.

For all that being here in Norway
does shed some light on Britain’s possible future. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am
not one of those lunatics who suggests a Norwegian model for post-Brexit Britain.
Britain is a top five world power with a population 65 million people, Norway
is not. However, Norway is a member of the European Economic Area (EEA) which
is a kind of EU-lite for those who want access to the EU’s Single Market, but do
not actually want to join it. In Norway’s case one can see their point. EU
membership for rich Norway would be utterly punitive as Brussels would almost
certainly remove Oslo’s massive oil and gas-fuelled sovereign wealth fund in
the name of ‘solidarity’ and to keep the eternal Euro disaster brewing.

And yet there are some pro-EU
Norwegian politicians who will tell you what a terrible position Norway finds
itself in. This is because to their mind Norway must pay but has no say. In fact,
that is only partially true. Norway and the other three EEA members have proved
remarkably adroit at getting EU directives amended. The real point about Norway’s
relationship with the EU is a sovereign point. Norway has indeed chosen to pay
a price for access to the Single Market, and part of that price is adherence to
elements of the Free Movement Directive (FMD). But it is not the whole Norway-EU
story.

As I was travelling this morning
on the train from Oslo airport to Oslo Central Norwegian television was showing
a criminal from Eastern Europe being deported. If that criminal had been
convicted in Britain under the FMD the British would not have had the right to
deport him as an EU citizen unless he posed an immediate threat to British (i.e.
other EU) citizens.

Which brings me back to the Brexit
dead parrot debate. This morning the normally sound Rachel Sylvester wrote in The Times: “The truth is that when
nations prosper, by interacting with the rest of the world, it is impossible
because of globalisation for any country to “take back control”. On the face of it Sylvester’s
argument is sound. However, her use of the phrase ‘take back control’ is
disingenuous. That phrase is a Brexiteer phrase and refers to their desire to
remove Britain from the European treaties. Sylvester is instead referring to normal
international treaties and quite deliberately conflating the two, when in fact
there is a world of sovereign difference between them.

An international trade treaty is
made between two or more sovereign states. They agree constraints upon their
sovereign action to make the treaty work. However, they still remain sovereign actors
free to make or break treaties as they so choose. The EU treaties, particularly
(in sequence) the Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon treaties have become
progressively different in both scope and ambition to traditional international
treaties. EU treaties were and are designed to replace and thus abolish the
nation-state by progressively transferring the legal international identity of said
state across a whole range of competences (acquis) to the EU in order to eventually
make the EU ‘Europe’s’ sole ‘sovereign’ legal international entity. Thus, whilst
international treaties constrain the sovereignty of the state in the name of
mutual benefit, EU treaties destroy the state and in so doing seeks to create a
new and alternative form of government.

The reason that sovereign Norway
bemoans its lack of influence over the EU is the same reason Norway has always
bemoaned its lack of influence over the rest of Europe. With the possible exception
of the Viking period Norway is simply too small and thus too lacking in power
to exert much influence – period. Britain is not Norway and its relative power
would afford a sovereign Britain far more influence over the rest of Europe –
EU or no EU – than Norway precisely because Britain is a powerful state. Chancellor
Merkel acknowledged as much last week when she said that it was far too early
to write the British off because Britain remains a “formidable” economic and military
power.

At the end of the parrot sketch
when farce has finally turned into complete absurdity Cleese says, “I’m not
prepared to pursue my line of inquiry any longer as I think this is getting too
silly”. The same could be said for Britain’s dead parrot Brexit debate.

About Me

Julian Lindley-French is Senior Fellow of the Institute of Statecraft, Director of Europa Analytica & Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow, National Defense University, Washington DC. An internationally-recognised strategic analyst, advisor and author he was formerly Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy at the Netherlands Defence Academy,and Special Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Leiden. He is a Fellow of Respublica in London, and a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington.
Latest books: The Oxford Handbook on War 2014 (Paperback) (2014; 709 pages). (Oxford: Oxford University Press) & "Little Britain? Twenty-First Strategy for a Middling European Power". (www.amazon.com)
The Friendly-Clinch Health Warning: The views contained herein are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any institution.